A Tale of Two Jerrys: Garcia and Lewis

“When life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door,” Jerry Garcia sang in my head, as Mr. Pahn said good morning.

Just like that, he called me up to inform me he had decided to end the tele-marketing program, because he just was not booking as much business as he should, and now has plenty of time to make the calls himself. He could no longer pay me $10 per hour for each hour of calling plus $20 per census, but I could call all I wanted on my own, and he would pay me $90 per census. Well shit on that, thought I. I decided once again I had to take things in to my own hands, so off I went to Craig’s List to seek my forturne, yet again.

This time, I used everything I learned from Mr. Pahn and Boss J: it is all a numbers game. I started applying for everything, indiscriminantly, I did not care what, afterall, I had sold perfume to old Mexican men in gas station parking lots. I was one step away from being a whore and/or a debt collector at this point; my ego had dissolved along with my shame.

I got one temp agency on the phone, and they lured me down to their office with their bullshit. Of course, by the time I got down there, the $11 an hour tele-marketing job had turned into a $10 an hour fundraising job. It was for the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s Annual “Lock Up” Program, you know, Jerry’s kids, except no Jerry Lewis, and no telethon, just me on the outbound end of a phone calling up executives and business owners and putting them under arrest “for having a big heart.” A friend of mine did this a couple of years ago, back before the whole world went broke, back when it actually made sense. The MDA puts these “business leaders” under arrest and they have to reach out to their network to raise their bail money.

The temp recruiter, Angie, coached me on how to conduct myself during the interview. I have to be high energy, and positive. Fortunately, I have been trained by Boss J, Mr. Pahn, and Stella Adler’s key disciples, so I know I can probably handle it.

The next day I booked another interview with another temp agency. They wanted me to take a typing test. I had never taken a typing test, or typing. I can type fast because I write fast, but this test was about typing something from a page. Luckily, I have pretty close to a photographic memory, so I just memorized as much as I could and just typed it, all the while hearing my father’s voice in my head.

When I was in high school, he constantly told me that I would never amount to nothing if I did not take a typing class. I was busy taking other classes that I thought would increase my chances of getting a scholarships to colleges far away from them, and I did succeed in that. But I wondered, as I typed, had he gotten the last laugh afterall. Had I in fact, after all of that education, amounted to nothing? Isn’t that one explanation of why someone with my education and corporate background was now taking a typing test at the age of 36 in the ass of nowhere Cerritos?

Ding! Time’s up! Time for me to take me seat at the boardroom with the recruiter, who would reveal my typing speed to me.

“43 words per minute. Not bad. A little above average.”

“Wow!,” I said, “My father used to always tell me I would never amount to anything if I didn’t take typing, but I guess he was wrong!”

As soon as the words came out of my mouth and silently started flagellating myself. “Goddammit, why did you do this yet again, why did you say something negative? You cannot say negative shit in a sales environment, you have to be positive and upbeat at ALL times.” My mind drifted back to my first meeting with Boss J. We were watching a Saturday Night Live rerun with Michael Jordan as a guest star. He wondered aloud how much the Championship rings were worth or insured for, and then a piece of verbal diarhea exploded from my mouth. I felt compelled to share the negative bit of trivia, that when Michael Jordan’s father was murdered, he was wearing a Championship ring. I beat myself up in the same way as soon as it came out of my mouth, but tried to play it off, like I don’t know how this negative thought got in here and came out my mouth; ponies, butterflies, daisies.

Anyway, the recruiter unveiled the wonderful new opportunity for me, that paid as much as $12 an hour. It was fundraising for the MDA. “Do you know how to be a phone actress?,” she asked.

“Oh honey, you have no idea,” I said with my inside voice.

“You have to be up and one from the minute you walk in the door at the MDA. When they ask questions, your hand has to be the first in the air. If you don’t make your quotas, they let you go.”

“What are the bonuses for achieving quotas?” I asked.

“The bonus is you get to keep your job.”

Columbus Day: A Day to Celebrate the Colombians in My Life

And not just the ones from Columbia, South Carolina and Columbia, Missouri….I’m talking about the ones from Colombia, South America, most of whom think Christopher Columbus, or Cristoforo Colombo, or Cristobal Colon raped and pillaged their ancestors…But the fact of the matter is….if you’re from the Americas, at some point you have to be grateful that your European ancestors did make it here and did rape your American ancestors so that you can exist now. It may have sucked for your American ancestors, but it sure worked for your European ones, and for you.

The politics of ethnic cleansing aside, today I celebrate the four most important Colombians in my life: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Shakira, Juanes, and last, but certainly not least, Fernando, who is actually the perfect combination of the first three.....although most people only get to see his Shakira side.....and although I’ll be the first to admit that if they haven’t already made a gay porn version of “Love in the Time of Cholera,” Fernando should definitely play the role of the doctor, and they should definitely call it “Love in the Time of Mariconeria”…..All that said, Fernando is as rich in spirit as Pablo Escobar was in riches of this earth.

He has straightened me out more than once, with his consejos, kindness, and other acoutrement….which I am quite sure would also be found in Shakira’s make up bag. He has a supreme capacity for foregiveness, unless you are a straight guy who cheats on one of the women in his life.

In a recent viewing of “Sex in the City,” the movie, he confided that although he thinks Steve is a cutie patootie, he would never be able to condone the cheating, and hence, Miranda would just have to move to LA, where her gay Latino friends would help her raise her baby in Samantha’s condo next door to Gilles’.

I am reminded that Fernando is the most conservative of Mis Gran Hermanas, as he adjusts his bifocals to get a better look at the photos on one of his bootie call websites. “Mija, come look at this guy’s lips,” he exclaims with delight. “Now let’s look at his naked pictures….”

“The African King had nice lips.” I say.

Busily multi-tasking, Fernando looks up from his screen filled with closeups of various guys’ money shots, and peers over his bifocals sighing, “I know Mija, but the bottom line is he cannot provide for you, and therefore he is not appropriate.”

Part of me knows that Fernando has spoken the truth yet again. He periodically sums up huge truths with a one liner. He came to visit me in Brooklyn once, and we looked so out of place there, like two tropical birds next to a little wooden bird house made by a Cub Scout. We made the best of it, but by the end of the evening he made the astute observation, that maybe LA is the perfect median point between the South and New York. It’s sunny and warm, people have time to talk and hang out, but they’re liberal AND friendly. I did not think there could be such a things as a rude liberal that has no time for you until I spent some time in New York City.

All the self help books say you have to love yourself first before you can really love anybody else or they can love you. My late blooming on the path of self-love may explain many things in my life….but I begin to practice it, by seeing myself the way my dog and some of the people in my life see me, the people that don’t hold back. Fernando does not hold back, not with plants, not with animals, not with people. He throws brutal honesty in there for the humans, but increases his level of tact depending on how much he cares about your feelings. I appreciate his tact and caring with me. I can see it upsets him when I do not take care of myself. I now see that not taking care of myself is just as wrong as ripping one of his orchids out of its coconut pod. I reflect on how guilty I would feel if he left me in charge of his plants and I let them die, and apply that to myself.

Fernando believes in living every day as if it were his last, in every way. He leaves no regrets. He leaves nothing unexpressed. He leaves nothing unconquered, or unconquisted. He is a fearless explorer, pushing past the possibility of getting gobbled by sea serpents, or sailing off the edge of the eath, or it ending in 2012, entering foreign lands, and thriving in them, and he is also a native, loving and caring for the plants, animals, and people around him, until he returns to them.

Dialing for Dollars

But enough of love and war, I need to get back to finding new ways to make money, since my perfume career had come to an abrupt halt, and I have yet to start earning money consulting to small businesses or by resurrecting Empire State Chocolate. A return to the insurance career which I started in mid July seemed like the logical choice.

The Lawd/Universe has a sick sense of humor. As I have mentioned many times, I was the girl who could barely sell Girl Scout Cookies. If I invented sushi, I would call it dead raw fish. My sales challenges contributed to the cryonization of Empire State Chocolate. I have overcome and mastered many things in life that came very difficult to me: networking mixers, the Spanish language, driving a stick shift, learning to do so in the mountains of Spain with driving instructors who mostly speak Catalan, which I do not. In some ways I consciously and unconsciously implored the Lawd/Universe to help me develop sales skills, preferably at no cost to me.

In some ways, the Lawd/Universe granted my wish. I began looking for jobs to supplement my income in June. Generating Leads for the Pahn Insurance Agency presented itself as my first and only opportunity. I will not sugar coat it: it is tele-marketing. Mr. Pahn gives me a list of 100 or 200 businesses and I have to called them all and cajole them to not hang up on me, revealhow many people they employ, allow me to tempt them with the prospect of getting a better benefit value for the buck, and then provide me with the name, age, zip code, and dependent information for each employee. Easier said than done, since one in ten is disconnected, about three in ten can barely make payroll, and about three in ten would never spend the money giving their employees health insurance. Of the two in ten who do consider providing health insurance for their employees, at least one of them gets it from their brother-in-law or best friend from high school, and would never consider changing even if it saves them thousands of dollars per year. People do not like to change, even when it behooves them.

The irony of the situation is not lost on me. I work as a 1099 contractor, which means my “employer,” Mr. Pahn does not provide me with any benefits, and I call up struggling business owners and attempt to convince them to provide benefits to their employees, something I could obviously not afford to do myself, when I had employees.

Although I do not particularly like what I do, I genuinely like Mr. Pahn. I learn from him. He has the ultimate sales personality. He tells me to always agree with the customer, something I never would have thought to do. I respect Mr. Pahn for attempting to do things differently for this economy. He says he doesn’t know what’s happening, he said it was easier to make money back in the height of the 70s gas crisis than it is now. He asked me if he thought it would make difference if I bribe people with a $5 Starbucks card if they give me the census data. I told Mr. Pahn that I was no marketing genius, but when I struggled to make payroll, a $5 Starbucks card would not be enough to send me on a health insurance shopping spree for my employees.

Still, we press on. I have worked my way up. When I started off I made $5 per hour, and $10 per census. After I received three censuses, I made $7 per hour, and $13 per census. Finally, after I received eleven censuses, I made $10 per hour, and $20 per census. At least I felt like I was on easy street, but getting there was not easy. People hung up on me and said mean things, which I did not like, although the tutelage of Boss J helped me to get over that.

Then Mr. Pahn changed the rules. From now on, he would only accept censuses for businesses with at least three employees, and we must get at least one census for every ten hours of calling. Since I already have two censuses, that means I can mindlessly call for twenty hours this week and get paid for it no matter what. Is the universe great or what?

The (African) King and I

I lost count of the gleams in Charles’ eyes, as he scientifically noted the TRUE sexual orientation and objective of each passerby on Sunset Boulevard while licking actual and imaginary salsa from the corners of his lips. Charles watches and comments on people like an expert bird watcher wherever he goes, often forgetting himself, and forgetting to use his inside voice for his observations, or at least a language his subjects do not understand.

“Did you see that?” he whispered, in and uncharacteristically demure voice.

“Another closest queen that doesn’t know it yet?”

“Mija, he was checking you out!”

“Really? I never pick up on those things.”

“You miss a lot, mija. You know why?”

“No,”

“Because you’re always looking down. Look up! Smile!” his fingertips meringued between his ears, chin, and chest to signal a forthcoming profound comment.

“Look. I’m going to tell you something that took me forty four years to learn: When someone looks you in the eyes, you have an 80% - 90% guarantee they’re interested. The way you can find out, is to hold their gaze. Now maybe, they’re shy like you too, and they’ll drop their eyes, which also means you caught them. To find out for sure, throw them a bone and smile. In your case, since you’re a girl, he should come after you if he’s a man, and he’s interested.”

We both smiled.

“You know where I learned this?”

“No,” I said.

“At Superior, the ghetto Mexican grocery store near my house. It may look like Pisa-Central from the outside, but believe me, I score constantly there, because I look them in the eyes. And that is a metaphor for the world.”

Like eager brokers in the heat of the real estate boom, Mis Gran Hermanas impatiently await the day they can stage me and put me back on the market. Lately they have been using a “no pressure, we don’t really care, whenever you’re ready, honey” approach, but if you ply one of them with a cocktail or two, she will look you dead in the eyes and tell you point blank they’re ready to be tias (aunts) again, and a they’d really like to add some little blonde ones to their collection.

They already abound with a plethora of biological and non-biological sobrinos (nieces and nephews), but apparently can never have enough excuses to visit Disneyland. They revere women, especially mothers; one of them cannot even abide the recounting of a mom joke in his presence. While they run amuck themselves on the internet, in clubs, and apparently, in neighborhood Mexican grocery stores, they hold extremely conservative, old fashioned views when it comes to male/female relationships. They turn into Log Cabin Republicans with a flick of their imaginary wands the minute they smell any hint of any woman not getting her propers.

Not surprisingly, they DO NOT approve of my long term, and now long distance relationship, with Khaled Kadhouri, the love of my life, the African King, who so happens to be a non-English speaking Muslim from Algeria. This relationship makes no sense to them, (or apparently anyone else), it irritates them, they want it to go away and in the meantime keep a thick layer of barrier cream between it and them. They see no redeeming qualities, no upside potential.

I admit to Charles that I am not the girl I was five years ago, when I first met the African King, and many of the things that made me feel at home with him then, I now recognize as dysfunctional patterns that I should run like hell from, familiar as they may be. However, I do love the African King, despite the fact he often does and says things that make me too angry to speak to him for hours, days, or weeks.

Before I continue, I should clarify a few things about the African King. People often imagine him as Black or Arab, not as a tall, white man with eyes that alternate between green and hazel. The African King is a Kabylie Berber, a type of white person native to North Africa for tens of thousands of years, flip-flopping between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam over the centuries. When not holed up in mountain enclaves, head-butting the opposition of world Soccer championships, or instigating revolutions, Kabylie Berbers have been known to sack and pillage surrounding areas, first as the Phoenicians, later as the Barbary pirates. Physically beautiful, athletic, and extremely dramatic, they typically conduct themselves in neurotic Brooklyn Jew fashion, a la Woody Allen and Larry David. Imagine the most dramatic Black man, most dramatic Latino man, and the most neurotic Jewish man you have ever met in your life and swirl them altogether, add an arch-conservative Muslim ideas and you will begin to imagine the African King. At last I found someone equally extreme and hard headed as myself. I loved him so much I gave up pork for a time, the ultimate sacrifice and symbol of devotion coming from a Virginia/North Carolina girl such as myself.

Mis Gran Hermanas disapprovingly note that he has not made his way to this hemisphere, nor run across the Mexican border, nor squeezed through a hole in it, as some of them were man enough to do for love and freedom. They have no sympathy, patience, or tolerance for his inability to be here with me, and interpret his non-presence as a direct insult. To quote Boriqua, as she flips open her imaginary fan, “When a man loves you,” as she wafts it and herself through the surrounding air, “he will climb mountains, and cross oceans to be with you,” and then snaps it shut for emphasis. The African King’s lack of mountain climbing and ocean crossing leaves them underwhelmed, unimpressed, and unforgiving.

I realized recently, that mostly I love the African King out of habit, out of respect for the intense things we have experienced together, and to some extent from a sense of guilt and obligation. I learned earlier in life that I could not stay with a man for whom I had no passion, with no way of increasing, not decreasing, the love and bond between us over time. I do share those things with the African King. We converse in my second language and his fifth, we come from different places in the world, whose conventions weigh us down, yet meet on some inexplicable psychic wavelength.

Like Santa Claus, the African King seems to know when I am sleeping, when I am awake, or whether I am sick or well, even when we’re separated by thousands of miles. Although he has brought considerable pain into my life, he seems to want the best for me in his own way, which he likely assumes is better than he could ever give me. He once dreamt that I was dying, and people were gathering around me, and somehow he got me to say the phrase from the Koran (in Arabic) that Muslims say as their last breath. He constantly worries about the possibility of my death, perhaps rightfully, and tries to do things to prevent it or at least make sure I do not end up in a place where a hot collar will be affixed to my neck for eternity.

I have learned many things, both strange and profound from this relationship.

I told Charles I could not imagine myself calling the African King and telling him it’s over. I could only imagine him saying or doing something that made me so angry that I would stop talking to him again, and something else would happen in the months before I forgave him again. I assured him, that even if I did call the African King, and told him it was over, it would not be. My heart would twitch like a dead snake until sundown, and probably much longer than that.

I told Charles that I wished to be fully present in any relationship I entered, and not bring a half life or ghost of another one with me. I now understood the unfairness of that to me and the other person when that happens. Charles agreed with me whole-heartedly.

“On the other hand,” I said, “maybe at this age, it’s normal to carry torches. Women my age, and men within ten years of it, have had a heart break or two. Maybe we don’t have time to recover from them and start fresh. Maybe we just have to accept one another, ghosts and all. Though, I will say that most people I know who got into a successful relationship, did take a detox period in between.”

“Maybe that’s what you’re doing now, Mija.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I tend to stay in relationships for years after I should end them, and try to use that time as my detox period. I reckon I’m chicken shit, and make other people suffer for it. This is more than chicken shit, there’s love there too, along with sadness and disappointment.”

“You’ll know when it’s time, Mija,” Charles said gently, “trust me, you’ll know.”

Candle, Candle Burning Bright

“No hay una enfermedad que queda cien anos, no una cuerpo para resistarlo.”
(There is not a disease that can last a hundred years, nor a body that can resist it.), Fernando said matter of factly as I recounted my day. The trials and suffering of others dwarf this small and silly problem of mine that saps and drains me like a tapeworm. I am embarrassed and ashamed to have it, of the way I let it ravage me, and the fact I cannot control it.

“We will see you in a little while, Mama” he said.

Mis Gran Hermanas (My Big Sisters: my fabulous and overly protective gay Latino cohorts, now hovering between 45 and 55, but never looking a day over 38), had the displeasure of meeting March a couple weeks earlier.

“Who left the toilet seat up?” she demanded as she swaggered towards them John Wayne-like. It was truly the most cordial introduction March could muster. Mis Gran Hermanas quickly pegged her as a closeted, repressed Lesbian with an axe to grind, and began treating her accordingly. In her previous drunken tirades, she had mentioned she had a problem sharing a bathroom with a man (clearly), especially a straight one, though she doesn’t want to live with a “Faggot,” either.

Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. As part of Operation “It’s Raining Men,” Fernando and Charles planned to drop by and fag out anyway, and would now quadruple their normal level of faggottiness based on last night’s rant. (We want March to leave on her own so I don’t have to pay a lawyer a $1000 to formally evict her.)

As they began to make their grand exit from the humble home I unfortunately now share with March, they said, “Mija, please get in the car with us and take a ride around the block.” They wanted an update on what the lawyer could do. I told them it would cost at least $1000 and may not work, but I could no longer stand the negative energy of March, and worried she may kidnap SHJ.”

“Sweetie, I think it’s time we put her on a candle,” Fernando said. “It’s totally white magic, you just wish her to leave with the least complication, because you don’t want the karma of black magic.”

“You just get a white candle, and write her full name in pencil on a piece of white paper, and then you cover it with honey, and put the candle on top of it. Every day for nine days, you keep that candle burning as much as possible, and you pray to the Saint in which you have the most faith for her to leave.”

“Can I use the Dalai Lama, since I’m a WASP?”

“Of course you can, Sweetie, use the Dalai Lama, and every time you think of her, you imagine her leaving. And go to a Botanica, and buy some pimenta voladora, and very discretely sprinkle it on her chankletas and purse every day. That will take care of her right away. There’s nothing black about this. This is totally white magic, but you need to get her out of your house.”

Since they were already prescribing a program of Santaria on their second meeting with March, I could only imagine what Mis Gran Hermanas would do if she irritated them further. I focused on the image of her loading a U-Haul as we looked on from the courtyard, gleefully sipping sangria and stroking our real and imaginary lapdogs.

“Up and Down, Up and Down, I will lead them Up and Down”

Depression and anxiety cackled as they shook my head and heart awake. A therapist once told me to “sit with them.”

“Oh sure,” I said, “How about I give you a glass of Clorox to gargle with and you sit with that? How about I light your hair on fire, and you sit with that? I get so sick of people acting like I imagine things, yet telling me in the same breath they’re my own fault and I deserve them. Nobody says that to people with lung cancer, although, arguably, they chain smoked cigarettes. Nobody says that to people with heart disease, even if they ate trash all their lives and now weigh 300 pounds. Nobody even says that to alcoholics with cirrhosis of the liver.”

“The only people they say that to are people with AIDS and people with some type of thing like this, but at least they don’t tell people with AIDS they’re just imagining it, and they should just get over it. Nobody ever faults anybody with cancer who wants the plug pulled, or even shoots themselves, but they fault people with this. And then they say it’s our fault for not taking the pills. People just think I’m crazier for hating pills, but they probably would too, if they walked in my shoes.

I have tried pills, twice. Effexor numbed me too much, and Celexa did not numb me enough. I do not want to be numb. I just want it to go away on its own, or at least with something natural like workaholism, which is cheaper than acupuncture.

A rude comment kicked off a crying jag, which always annoys people. Then it began to ease up after a positive conversation, and then another rude encounter got me down, and then another positive conversation lifted my spirits. I guess the truth is nothing stays the same, but how I hate the lows. People tell me “just don’t let it get you down.” I’ve done my damndest not to, trust me, but it comes for me, and will not let go. You don’t tell somebody in the midst of a heart attack not to let it get them down. It does feel like I imagine a heart attack, but a real heart attack caused by someone who clogged their own arteries is acceptable, this type of heart attack, is not acceptable. It’s my fault for allowing it to happen. I pray to be let out of this prison as soon as possible, and do not care how I leave it.

Dare I Eat a Pear?

“Now I brought pears from my father’s farm, and I want you to eat them!” March screeched at me as she loomed drunkenly in my office door.

First of all, ain’t no damn way I’m eatin’ any food her bitter old ass offers me. It’s probably poisoned. Second of all, I do not like her energy or aura, and prefer to avoid touching objects she touches. Third of all, as I told her:

“I don’t like pears! And I’m not going to start liking them now.”

March spends at least an hour telling me what a terrible person I am, and for some reason, I listen, and attempt to reason with her. Haven’t I learned my lesson with alcoholics and dry drunks yet? Their perspective and verbal diarrhea bears zero relationship to reality.

After every battle with March, I reflect, and I ultimately realize that everything she says is either a result of her delusional thinking and/or an attempt to manipulate, wear down, and sabotage the other person (me). Nothing positive comes from attempting to listen to it. It makes me feel like shit even if I know her comments do not hold water. I’ve finally learned that it always makes you feel bad to hear people say bad things about you, and always makes you feel good to hear people say good things about you, regardless of the validity of either, so you might as well reach for the better feeling conversations.

I used to think that listening to the ravings of a dry drunk or an alcoholic made them feel loved, accepted, and heard, things they needed so badly, and if I could just give them those things, miraculous change would ensue. I now know better. First of all, they rarely remember that we had the conversation or that I listened, and hence I failed to “make them feel loved, accepted, and heard,” and therefore no miraculous change ensued. Who did I think I was? God? An ineffective one that felt like shit because she was so ineffective?

I refuse to do this any more, especially for March. From now on, I plan to treat her as if she’s mold: some unwanted thing that came into my house, that I will have professionally removed as soon as the funds for that come available.

Do you think I’m being extreme? Callous? Un-Buddha-like? Well, I did attempt to give her a chance. I invited her to eat with us. I served her sangria AND Banana Pudding, my second most powerful asset. The next day she wrote me an extremely rude email, in addition to her typical rude comments. Just because I meditate every day, does not mean I can now cope with rudeness and insults, especially from people to whom I have served Banana Pudding.

Banana Pudding is my acid test. If we cannot make peace after I have served you Banana Pudding, there is no hope. None. March and I came to this crossroads almost two months ago. She refuses to leave unless I evict her, which will cost $1000.

I cannot abide this scourge on my house, the negativity she emanates. Could the Lawd/Universe be forcing me to yet another lesson? This lesson of having to live or work in close quarters with an unreasonable and dominant woman keeps coming up for some reason. I normally just leave, except this time, I’m not leaving, because this is MY home. I assume I have to face it head on, and deal with it, or not mind it, except I do, a helluva lot. What shittinness! What shittiness!